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Without Breathing, Without a Sound/Transcript
NARRATOR: "The first day of summer vacation is a disappointment. I woke up. Water came down from the leaden sky in Biblical proportions. I was optimistic at the time. A quick summer shower, I thought. Torrents of rain for a few minutes, then it's gone. No such luck. Rainwater is relentlessly pouring down from the blue-gray sky outside, streaming down the glass of my window in small brooks and rivers and gathering together to form miniature ponds on the walkways. Just like it has done for the past two and a half hours. So I've been half-assedly cleaning up in between half-assedly reading a book, packing my stuff on the side when I get bored of the first two. The weather drags my spirits pretty down too, making it harder to do anything properly." NARRATOR: "Something bumping quite loudly against my door rouses me from my apathy. I hope it's not Kenji and his crazy indoors bowling alley. ... I hear no more sounds from the corridor until I walk to the door and open it. Rin. I wish seeing her would evoke some more emotion in me, but for one, I'm too surprised that she came to see me and for two, she is soaking wet. Her uniform shirt is drenched and she is standing in a self-created puddle. Droplets of rainwater are dripping from her short bangs and sliding down her nose until they fall down from the tip. One. By. One." HISAO: "Umm... hi. How are you feeling?" RIN: "Medium normal." NARRATOR: "The relative questionability of her statement aside, she sure doesn't look too good." HISAO: "You're all wet." RIN: "It's because I come from the outside. Do you know it?" HISAO: "Why'd you be outside? It's raining buckets out there, if you haven't noticed." RIN: "I haven't. It's raining pretty hard though. I was on a walk." HISAO: "Is this what you call “wallowing in self-pity?”" RIN: "Do you think I'm pitiful?" HISAO: "No, I implied that you think you are." RIN: "I'm not, and rain is not a sad thing. Don't you ever walk in the rain?" HISAO: "I do, but only with proper equipment, like an umbrella." RIN: "You just need to imagine you have a blue umbrella with white stripes." HISAO: "It might be tough when rain is falling on my head." RIN: "Just imagine harder." NARRATOR: "... Yeah, she definitely is back to normal. Those half-sarcastic, inconsiderate remarks that really push my buttons even though she doesn't mean it, that vacant, spaced-out stare that always expects more than it gives. It's so... very much like her." RIN: "I may need to come in. I need some help with this water and clothes I'm wearing." NARRATOR: "My brain quickly solves this equation, and I stumble with my words, a stark display of contrast against Rin's easygoing self-invitation." HISAO: "But, Emi..." NARRATOR: "Rin shakes her head vehemently, causing water to sprinkle everywhere." RIN: "She left. Besides she would just worry and fuss until she could not worry or fuss any more, which always takes a troublesomely long time. It's in fact longer than I want to hear her fussing, and I thought you probably are not the fussing kind." NARRATOR: "She slumps down on my desk with a squishy sound. Her soaked clothes are making the desk and everything on it wet but she doesn't care. ..." HISAO: "Okay. Fine. I'll help you out. I have a towel somewhere. Do you want dry clothes? Is a uniform fine? I'm taller than you, but..." RIN: "Everything is fine." NARRATOR: "With a little searching I find a fresh uniform and a fluffy towel from the depths of my closet. The towel in one hand and the uniform in the other, I turn to face Rin again, uncertain of the next step. There is something wrong with me, a normal guy would just—" RIN: "Stop worrying. It is not a problem." NARRATOR: "She probably could see right through my hesitant demeanor. As if I was completely transparent to her. I push my anxiety away and concentrate on the eight buttons lined on her shirt, just like mine has. Only the first button is an obstacle, and after getting it over I undo the others with slightly less shaking hands." NARRTOR: "Throwing the soaked shirt aside, I reveal Rin's pale upper body, shrouded only in her light blue brassiere which instantly reminds me of her saying it's her favorite color. I try not to think too much about... stuff, but it's hard not to look at her body with what I can only think of as mixed feelings. I don't know what to think of this, so I just watch her." NARRATOR: "Rin looks... brittle. She is like a shell, a fragile thing just barely holding together. Her ribs, each of them visible under her pale skin, are moving up and down in the rhythm of her breaths. Rin always struck me as quite thin, but I realize now that the manic creative period before the exhibition opening might've caused her to lose weight. Did she eat properly and enough? Definitely not and probably not. This ugly, yet beautiful bare minimum of a human body that belongs to someone I care about is a contradiction of aesthetics in itself, oddly becoming of her. My eyes follow her collarbone to her shoulder and down her arm until the abrupt end. No, it's less than the bare minimum, I think with a passing pang of sadness and some guilt for thinking like that." NARRATOR: "Her arms, degenerated into almost nothing but bone and skin due to lack of use, look very short now that the long sleeves of her uniform are not covering them: My lack of any negative reaction makes me think that I've actually grown pretty accustomed of the various physical abnormalities of my schoolmates. I always wondered why Rin keeps her shirt sleeves long, only tying them in a simple knot at where the elbow would be. It seems a bit impractical, but then again she is not exactly the pinnacle of practicality. Maybe she likes it, maybe it is somehow important to her. Maybe there is no deeper meaning to it. I feel like asking, and almost do, but Rin's miserable state requires a higher priority of my attention." NARRATOR: "She's stopped talking too, after we ran out of spiky greetings. I guess there is no need for chitchat then." NARRATOR: "I pick up the towel from the bed and wrap it around her head, rumpling it all over her hair until most of the rainwater is hopefully soaked into the fabric." NARRATOR: "She peeks from below the towel at me, looking up with impassive eyes. It looks like she wants to say something without saying it. It's that kind of a look. But I can't read what she is thinking about from her face, so I just keep on fussing with the towel around her shoulders and hair. The silence is oppressive, terrifying. Communication between us has suddenly been reduced to the movements of my hands and the towel, and Rin swaying her body to and fro. My jagged breathing and her quiet breaths, trying to find a common rhythm that just is not there. I think I can hear her heartbeats, or maybe they are just mine redoubled. As I brush a rogue strand of hair aside from her ear, Rin suddenly presses her cheek against the back of my hand. The contact is electric, a jolt of current surging through me." NARRATOR: "Whether she seeks comfort, warmth or just my touch I wouldn't know, but I can't help touching her back, caressing her soft cheek with my hand. And with closed eyes, she kisses me, on the fingers, counting the joints with her lips... I am saddened beyond my expressive capability. Here we are, a boy and girl, both in love or something like that with each other, or maybe not... and yet..." NARRATOR: "Something is broken, I can feel it in me and in Rin; in the way our gazes merely brush against each other, shying away from contact; in her closed, timid posture and in my way of touching her like a china doll, afraid of shattering her delicate form. In how we are closer than we have ever been, yet I'm not feeling happy. It's like yesterday. When did tenderness and forlornness become one and the same word, acts of affection start invoking only longing? ...How, why did we end up like this? “No, don't answer that,” I'd like to say to myself, but fighting against the omniscience of self-awareness is a lost cause. Still, I am here, and Rin is here, and it feels like she might be able to solve whatever problems she has. And if she can, why couldn't I? Why couldn't we? It feels like taking that step is too much, too difficult, too uncertain. So for now, all I can do is dry her up so she won't get a cold again." NARRATOR: "I pet her head, trying to sort out the hair that refuses to be sorted out even when wet. A pair of dark, glazed eyes follows my every movement." HISAO: "Pants too?" NARRATOR: "She nods an answer, leans back and spreads her legs, with a grotesquely inviting gesture that makes a nasty feeling crawl up and down my spine like a bad premonition. It's not enough to sober me though, as the silence is starting to make me feel detached from myself. I move automatically, without thinking even though I should; I should talk to her about this, or at least about something. The silence is a spell, a pact that has bound us to this private world made of the dull sound of rainfall and the soft feel of her skin against my fingers. The button of her trousers is fastened tight, but it opens surprisingly easily. Slipping them off is hard, mostly because she is sitting on them, with no intention of standing up to ease my task. I kneel down uncomfortably and titillatingly between her legs so I can quickly dry her bare feet, remembering that they are as important to her as hands are to me. As I work the towel up from her ankles, Rin brushes her thigh against my cheek and nudges the small of my back with her heel to make me come closer. I look up to meet her silent stare that was waiting for me to look up. That unassuming, expectant stare seems to say that the ball is in my court. ... I fleetingly brush my hand against her inner thigh." NARRATOR: "The touch makes her gasp sharply, as if she was trying to hold back breathing. What if I do this, then? The small kiss I place on her thigh is enough to make Rin lose her composure, to shut her eyes, to squeal almost inaudibly. ...Is that what you want too? Would it be all right now? To take this step? ...What if? Maybe if... Hazy thoughts float somewhere in the back of my unfocused mind. Somehow, this whole situation is making it hard to think, as if my head was full of cotton fluff. But that's all right. It seems thinking is not something we need right now." Next Scene: Proof of Existence Category:Rin Scenes Category:Scenes in Rin's Route Category:Act 4 Transcripts Category:Act 4 - Dream Transcripts